


no time to rest

by tempt



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Comeplay, Gangbang Aftermath, Kissing, M/M, Masochism, Mentioned Megaera/Zagreus, Mentioned Zagreus/Others, Mild Painplay, Open Relationships, Overstimulation, Porn with Feelings, Sloppy Seconds, Tenderness, Wet & Messy, mild kink shaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempt/pseuds/tempt
Summary: Thanatos has finally looked away, though it’s hardly a relief when the reason is that he’s glaring at a spot in the ground, as if he’s been spurned.Because he wasn’t invited to a gangbang.“I hadn’t expected this would be something you’d have any interest in,” Zagreus says. “Weren’t you the one who said you weren’t interested in inflicting pain? Not interested in involving yourself with my self-destructive habits, something like that?”“And yet, somehow, you always seem to involve me anyway.”
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 263





	no time to rest

“What a mess.”

The voice makes Zagreus startle, sitting up in his bed. The shock of it cuts instantly through the satiated haze of post-orgasm bliss, and he scrambles for something to cover himself. “Than!” he says, throwing a corner of his blankets over his lap—though he’s sure Thanatos has already had a clear enough view of him—of his spent cock, his messy hole… and continues to have a clear view of the thin red cuts lacing his skin. “I… I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Evidently,” Thanatos responds, his voice dry. He looks pristine and untouchable, out of place in the mess of Zagreus’s room, his feet floating a few inches above the floor. “What have you gotten yourself into here, Zag? I thought the threats from your father’s realm were limited to your escape attempts.”

“I’m… not in danger,” Zagreus admits, shifting uncomfortably beneath Thanatos’s scrutiny. His mind still feels sluggish from pleasure, reeling to catch up to the present situation in front of him.

“No, you don’t seem to be.” Thanatos finally alights on the ground, his steps delicate as he approaches. “I came because I’d sensed a number of wretches converging on you, but it seems as though you’ve quite enjoyed yourself, in fact. What is this, Zagreus?”

Trust Thanatos to ask him to spell it out, avoiding any ambiguity that may have allowed him to save face. The tone of Thanatos’s voice and his appraisal make Zagreus feel guilty, as if he’s done something wrong. A guilt that is unfamiliar to him, for it’s not as if his own father’s lectures had made him feel anything but reckless indignance. Still, with Than, the feeling is…

“You know of my relationship with Megaera, don’t you?” he asks, starting with solid ground.

“Of course. I suppose I hadn’t asked for the details, but it wouldn’t be difficult to guess some of your proclivities,” Thanatos responds. “Still, I hardly think that Megaera could be responsible for… all of this.” His gaze drifts down to the blanket over Zagreus’s lap, if only for a moment.

“I had asked, too, if you were comfortable with me having… more casual relations with others,” Zagreus continues.

“Yes,” Thanatos agrees. He stands before Zagreus’s bed now, within arm’s reach, looking down at him with an inscrutable look.

“ _I cannot say I understand the desire,_ ” Thanatos had said then, “ _But it’s your body, Zagreus. As long as you don’t go around offering your heart so freely to others, I will not take offense at your decisions._ ”

“I wanted to be overwhelmed,” Zagreus explains, “So Meg summoned some wretches, and we… had a time of it.”

“I… see,” Thanatos says now, after a pause. This close, Zagreus can watch the minute expressions that flicker across his face, though trying to interpret them is no easier a task. “It seems like it was quite the event,” he says finally. “And I had thought only the Olympians made a habit of excluding me from invitations.”

“Than, that’s not—” Zagreus protests. Thanatos has finally looked away, though it’s hardly a relief when the reason is that he’s glaring at a spot in the ground, as if he’s been spurned. _Because he wasn’t invited to a gangbang._ “I… I hadn’t expected this would be something you’d have any interest in. Weren’t you the one who said you weren’t interested in inflicting pain? Not interested in involving yourself with my self-destructive habits, something like that?”

“And yet, somehow, you always seem to involve me anyway.”

Zagreus could point out that he hadn’t asked for Thanatos’s help— …if he wanted Thanatos to teleport away, leaving them with the uncertainty hanging between them until the next time he chose to appear. He says, instead, “You don’t have to take part if it’s not something you’re comfortable with, Than. I know you have different tastes, and I like what we have between us, too.”

“Tsch.” Thanatos clicks his tongue, but when he looks at Zagreus again his expression has softened. “Then who’s going to help you clean all this up?” he asks, and reaches a hand out to thumb at a cut on Zagreus’s face. The touch is unexpected, the barest sting of pain as Thanatos presses at the wound.

“You sound like my father,” Zagreus teases.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to invoke Lord Hades at a time like this,” Thanatos responds, and then he’s pressing forward to kneel on the bed, leaning into Zagreus to kiss him. Zagreus tries, for a moment, to pull away— _does Than know where his mouth’s_ been _? Will he still taste of come—?_ but Thanatos’s grip on his face is firm and he holds him still, unrelenting until Zagreus finally responds to him.

When they part, Zagreus finally recognizes the look on Thanatos’s face—the heated gaze pinning him down. Oh. Maybe he had been annoyed, or disdainful, but to some extent, Thanatos must be enjoying this too.

He hardly has the time to dwell on it before Thanatos is pushing him down on the bed with a firm hand against the base of his neck. He kneels over him, with Zagreus laid bare before him. The cold of Thanatos’s gauntlet against bare skin makes him shiver. Perhaps this is how the mortals feel when Thanatos approaches, awaiting their judgment. But the thrill of anticipation in Zagreus probably isn’t as common a reaction to Death.

His cock is too tired to return to full hardness just yet, but it makes a valiant enough attempt as Thanatos inspects him with care, the fingers of his uncovered hand tracing over each of the marks on his skin. They’re hardly a bother compared to the injuries he usually sustains on his escape attempts, but Thanatos’s careful attention to each one makes him acutely aware of them.

“I would have expected Meg to take better care of her belongings,” Thanatos says, inspecting the whip marks down Zagreus’s torso.

“She knows I can handle myself, Than—ouch!” he interrupts himself as Thanatos presses down, digging his fingernails into a claw mark left by one of the more vicious wretches.

Thanatos raises an eyebrow at his response. “Is this what you enjoy, Zag? Something so… destructive?”

Zagreus wants to protest, but he can’t deny the way he enjoys the dull throb of pain that accompanies the blood welling from the newly disturbed wound. He’s not used to this from Thanatos, though. Their lovemaking up to now has always been tender, shared laughter and gentle caresses. He’s unaccustomed to the almost dispassionate way Thanatos is looking at him now.

“I do enjoy it,” he says. “But it’s not something I need all the time, Than.” _It’s not something I need from_ you, he considers, but he can’t deny that a part of him is still excited at this treatment.

“You seem needy enough at the moment,” Thanatos says, with a small grin playing across his lips, but he lets up from where he’s pressing into Zagreus’s wounds. Instead, he removes himself from Zagreus entirely, floating over to the base of Zagreus’s bed. Zagreus feels the loss immediately, and has to resist the urge to reach for him. Thanatos can be impetuous sometimes—one wrong move and he might decide to disappear in an instant.

Instead, he watches cautiously as Thanatos unclasps the gauntlet from his right hand, setting it down with care before beginning to dig through the chest of clothing at the base of the bed. “Is there anything clean in here, Zag?” he mutters as he rifles through the fabrics.

“What are you looking for?” Zagreus asks, half-sitting up to watch.

“I said I was going to clean you up, wasn’t I?” Finally, Thanatos emerges with a small towel, a bit rumpled looking but clean enough. He goes over to the scrying pool to dampen the fabric (“Hey, that’s not for—” Zagreus tries to protest, without avail) before returning to the bedside. “You were right, I don’t think I’ve suddenly acquired a taste for hurting you.”

Instead, he takes the dampened cloth and runs it over Zagreus’s face, cleaning him of the fluids that doubtless cling to his skin. His movements are brisk but not rough as he runs the cloth through Zagreus’s hair, and Zagreus closes his eyes and lets him work.

“Tell me what they did to you.”

Zagreus opens his eyes again, trying to decipher whether Thanatos is looking for reassurance—but no, his tone sounds more curious than anything. He continues to work his way down Zagreus’s body with the towel, cleaning off the blood, sweat, and come.

“Well, Meg tied me up against the bed. And then she summoned some wretches. Pretty normal for one of our encounters, really, other than the bed bit.”

Thanatos snorts. “Really. I thought the wretches were more interested in impaling you on spears than, well,…”

Did—did he just make a joke? “Meg keeps tabs on all kinds of shades. The murder-y ones, and the… ones that are in Tartarus for other kinds of sin, too.” The gentle strokes of the towel across Zagreus’s cuts still bring with them the faintest sting of pain, but nothing with the intention to hurt like before. As the towel dries out and gets too rough against his skin, Thanatos, ever attentive, notices him wincing and goes back to the scrying pool to dampen it again. (And really, where is he going to get new scrying water to refill that thing if Than’s going to use it all up like this?)

“Hmm,” Thanatos answers noncommittally. He works his way down Zagreus’s body. Even though his movements are focused on efficiency rather than sensualness, cleaning in broad strokes without even the impropriety of lingering on the sensitive parts of him, Zagreus can feel himself responding to the tender care of the touch. By the time Thanatos has worked his way down to his lower body, Zagreus is already half hard again.

“They took turns fucking me,” Zagreus continues, not entirely sure of how much detail Thanatos wants, and finding himself nervously running his mouth to fill the gaps. “They’re not the most polite bedpartners, so it was pretty rough at first, but then I must have gotten more accustomed to it over time… and the come from earlier shades eased the way.”

Thanatos raises an eyebrow. He’s gotten down to Zagreus’s lower body now, and he grips one of Zagreus’s thighs, lifting it to inspect his hole. The movement forces Zagreus back against the bed to avoid unbalancing, and the blanket that had been precariously clinging to his lap falls away, leaving him exposed to Thanatos’s unimpressed gaze. True to his word, his hole still feels messy and loose, and there’s a small pool of wetness beneath him from the come that’s been steadily leaking out of him.

“I’m not sure if I can get all this cleaned up,” Thanatos says, dryly, but he presses the towel against Zagreus’s hole nonetheless. The fabric is rough against the sensitive rim, and Zagreus has to force himself to stay still, not to startle or accidentally kick Thanatos.

“Well, if you can’t then I’ll be good as new after the next time I die out there, I suppose.”

Thanatos pointedly ignores that comment, instead focusing on his work. He cleans around Zagreus’s hole first, running the fabric over his perineum and broadly across his inner thighs. Just the barest brushes against his balls and cock make Zagreus tense with sensitivity, the impatience until he finally gets touched building—wait, is Thanatos even going to touch him there?

Zagreus continues his monologue, still unsure if he’s encouraging Thanatos or further ticking him off. “Some of the wretches couldn’t wait their turns, so they made do with my hands or my mouth—or simply finished themselves off while watching.”

“Quite insatiable, weren’t they? I suppose that makes them a good match for you.”

“It was good,” Zagreus admits, “though even I couldn’t keep up with so many of them. They exhausted me, and then they kept going even after it started to feel like too much.”

“You were bested by such low-level wretches?” Thanatos asks, busying himself with with folding the towel over on itself to expose a clean part of the fabric, before he presses it firmly against Zagreus’s hole, pressing in just a little to clean inside—

“It’s sex, not combat—ow!” Zagreus protests again, and this time he does pull away. The texture of the fabric still feels rough and uncomfortable inside of him, definitely not a pleasant experience.

“Stay still, Zagreus.”

Thanatos grips his thigh more firmly, spreading him open, and that’s hot and everything but— “Didn’t you say you weren’t interested in hurting me? Stop trying to shove a towel in me if that’s not what you’re trying to do.”

Thanatos looks up at him from between his legs, and lets out a sigh. “What would you have me do then, Zagreus, wait for you to clean yourself by going out and dying? No wonder your room is such a mess, if that’s the cleaning philosophy you subscribe to.”

It’d certainly be effective enough, but the idea of going out to fight the Underworld with come still leaking out of him… “You could always use your fingers,” he says, trying not to be obvious about how much he wants it.

Perhaps he’s not very effective at it, because Thanatos looks a bit amused as he asks, “No other option, is there?”

“Nope!”

“Well…” Thanatos finally sets the cloth aside on a clean patch of bed and steps back. He’s still nearly fully clothed but for the gauntlet he had removed earlier, and even now he merely rearranges some of the draping fabrics across his body to keep them clean as he leans forth again, pressing Zagreus’s legs open once again. That’s right—Thanatos is just helping him clean up, there’s no reason he would need to undress for this. It would be greedy of Zagreus to expect more after he’s already had so much—

But for all his protests of exhaustion, Zagreus can’t help the soft noise of pleasure as Thanatos works his fingers into him. There’s no need for lube, and Thanatos’s fingers slide in smoothly, making wet noises against the come still gathered inside him. When he looks up, Thanatos is watching him intently, a faint redness to his own ashen complexion.

“What a mess,” he says again, though his voice sounds more impressed than disdainful this time. Unlike the clinical movements of earlier, he no longer clings to the pretense of mere cleaning, shifting his fingers within Zagreus with a different kind of intention. Zagreus has to bite down on his lip to avoid crying out at the too-much feeling of Thanatos pressing his fingers firmly against his prostate, palpating them against that spot experimentally.

Finally, he curls his fingers inward, drawing them out slick with come. For a moment, Zagreus thinks it might be hot if Thanatos wiped it off against his skin—but Thanatos isn’t so crude as that, carefully wiping his fingers against the set-aside cloth before pressing them back to Zagreus’s skin. He continues slowly, gradually scooping out the mess inside of Zagreus but teasing him slowly as he does, his gentle movements pressing Zagreus ever closer to yet another orgasm, yet not quite intense _enough_ to get him there.

“Than,” he finally gasps after what feels like too long. He hasn’t been watching that closely but it feels like progressively, Thanatos’s fingers have emerged from his body ever cleaner, and he continues to finger and toy with him just to tease. “Please, that’s enough.”

“Is it?” Thanatos asks, drawing his fingers from Zagreus’s body once again. “Let’s take a look, then,” he says, and then he grasps Zagreus by his thighs and heaves him up so he’s half bent over himself. He presses the fingers of both hands against Zagreus’s hole and stretches him wide, so that he can peer inside of Zagreus in the faint candlelight of the room.

“Than…” Zagreus protests, throwing an arm across his face to cover his blush. “Please.”

“Tell me what you need, Zagreus,” Thanatos says, removing his fingers from Zagreus and setting him back down against the bed, his movements gentle.

“Fuck me,” Zagreus says. When he moves his arms away again, he sees Thanatos fumbling with his robes, his movements nearly as urgent as Zagreus feels. He pulls his tights down just enough to free his cock, and it comes with a certain sense of validation to see that Thanatos is just as hard as he is.

Thanatos presses into him slowly. Though he’s no longer as sloppy inside as he was earlier, he’s been stretched out enough that it doesn’t hurt as Thanatos slides into him, his movements steady despite how aroused he must be. And Zagreus has been fucked a lot tonight (or is it day?), but he could never get tired of the feeling of Thanatos inside of him. For all that Thanatos appears to be cold, god of death that he is, he feels warm inside of Zagreus, a satisfying stretch that fills him up.

“Alright?” Thanatos asks him.

“Of course,” Zagreus laughs, and pulls him down to kiss him. They make out languidly as Thanatos moves inside him in shallow thrusts, slowly drawing out their pleasure. Zagreus wraps his legs around Thanatos, wanting all of him closer—but also urging him to hurry up. He’s been teased for long enough already. And Thanatos responds, holding himself up against the bed to thrust into Zagreus more forcefully.

“I can’t believe you let the shades see you like this,” he pants out.

“Are you jealous?”

“No,” Thanatos answers with a small grin, “I’m just concerned you’re damaging the fearsome reputation of the House of Hades.”

“I’m,” Zagreus says, a bit breathless as the pace of the thrusts increases, “I’m sure Megaera keeps them in enough fear.”

Thanatos lets out a laugh at that, and Zagreus pulls him down against him again, pressing messy kisses to his face until their lips come together once again. “And it’s not the same as this,” he adds, “not like it is with you.”

Thanatos doesn’t respond verbally, tilting Zagreus’s face up to him to deepen the kiss and stop any further discussion. It doesn’t take much longer for Zagreus to come, spurting across their bellies, a deep-seated exhaustion settling into him almost instantly. He’s already fucked beyond overstimulation, and Thanatos’s thrusts continue to send small echoes of pleasure-pain through him until he, too, comes shortly after.

They lie there together, skin pressed to skin, and it would be stifling if it were anyone else—no, well, it’s still a bit hot, Zagreus thinks, but can’t bring himself to pull away.

“So, are you going to clean me up again?” he asks after a while, shifting to nuzzle into the crook of Thanatos’s neck.

“Don’t push your luck, Zag.”

Zagreus laughs at that. “This does seem rather Sisyphean, doesn’t it?”

Thanatos groans. “Please don’t tell me you invited that thug as well.”

“No, no, it’s just a saying—nevermind.”

When Thanatos finally pulls free of him, he attempts to sit up, but doesn’t make it far before Zagreus tugs him back down to the bed to lie next to him. Thanatos wrinkles his nose a bit at the state of the bed, but settles by his side nonetheless with a put-upon sigh.

“You’re not upset then, are you?” Zagreus asks, because as much as he had enjoyed that, perhaps they should have a conversation not in the heat of the moment about it.

Thanatos turns to look at him, his face so close Zagreus can feel each exhale against his skin. “I’m not upset, I was just surprised. You can continue to experiment with… these things you’re interested in, I don’t mind.”

“You don’t feel left out, then?”

“As you can see,” Thanatos says, averting his eyes, “I suppose I ended up enjoying myself as well.”

Zagreus slides his hand across, tangling his fingers with Thanatos, feeling a bit juvenile as he does so even as Thanatos grips his hand back. “You could join in next time, if you’re interested.”

“No thanks.” Thanatos lets out a small laugh. “I still don’t like seeing you hurt, Zag, and I’m not sure I’d be able to resist killing any wretches that looked like they were threatening you. I’m sure that would ruin your party.”

“It probably would change the mood, yes,” Zagreus answers with a laugh of his own. The familiar discomfort of come between his legs makes him shift, and he tries again, hopefully, “So you’re really not going to help me clean up?”

Thanatos looks at him with faint amusement and kisses him again, but then he pulls away and sits back up. “I have to get back to work soon, Zag. I suppose you’ll just have to go plundering out in your father’s kingdom until something kills you. Good as new, right?” And then he flashes away, appears briefly at the foot of the bed to grab his gauntlet, and is gone.

**Author's Note:**

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End file.
